But you already know it’s been that kind of late winter and early spring in Houston. Here’s a look, now, at the rainfall totals the region has received during the last 60 days. This is a period when we would normally get about eight inches of rain.

Rain totals during the last 60 days. (NOAA)

As you can see, the region has received between 1 to 4 inches of rain during this period. It’s depressing indeed considering it’s unlikely to rain significantly at least through Saturday. More on the forecast below.

What we did get a heck of a lot of, beginning Sunday, was cold, un-March-like weather in the city. Although we didn’t set a low temperature for today — 36 degrees, set back in 2008 — temperatures still reached the upper 30s in parts of Houston.

Anyway, let’s do the numbers for last week.

Date

High T

Low T

Average

Departure

Rainfall

Monday

90

68

79

+16

0.00

Tuesday

78

59

69

+6

0.00

Wednesday

76

55

66

+2

0.12

Thursday

74

48

61

-3

0.00

Friday

84

68

76

+12

0.00

Saturday

74

61

68

+4

0.00

Sunday

66

47

57

-7

0.00

Average

77.4

58.0

68.0

+4.3

0.12 (tot)

After a very warm week for March now comes a very cold week.

PRESENT

This week’s weather will start out uncharacteristically cool, with temperatures 15 to 20 degrees below normal for late March. As dry and cold air continues to move into the region following Sunday’s front highs today should only reach into the mid-50s.

Temperatures on Tuesday morning could be a few degrees cooler than this morning’s lows, say forecasters with the Houston/Galveston office of the National Weather Service.

Daytime highs should climb back to near 70 degrees by Wednesday, and by Thursday moister air will start moving into the region off the Gulf of Mexico, raising the possibility of rain to 20 percent.

The models are not having a good time handling the evolution of a large low-pressure system that should move across the plains about one week from now, but it is probably this system that will bring the Houston metro area its next chance at appreciable rainfall.

Even this one isn’t that good of a bet, I’m afraid.

FUTURE

As of right now the region’s rain chances for the next two weeks are not overly promising.

I mentioned the upper-level low that could be a catalyst for rain next week, but if we take a look at a probabilistic rainfall forecast (below) showing the effects of that system we can see it may be the same old story: lots of rain for areas east-northeast of Houston, while we’re on the outskirts.

Probability of 1 inch or more of rain accumulation between now and April 9. (NAEFS)

The map above shows the probability of an area receiving 1 inch or more of rainfall total between now and April 9. Houston has a 40 to 60 percent chance of such.

SUMMARY

My rating scale for this week’s weather goes from 0 to 29, the number of points scored by Rockets guard James Harden on Sunday, including the game-winner to bury the San Antonio Spurs. He’s good.

My number: 21.

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FINE PRINT As always, thank you to the fine professionals at the National Weather Service for the information and data that make this weekly blog entry possible. Also, bear in mind there’s always uncertainty in weather forecasting, particularly the timing and intensity of precipitation.

Unlike 2011 when we had a pronounced La Niña signal, we are in neutral “La Nada” territory. Sure it is dry and slowly getting drier. But there is absolutely nothing to indicate this will persist over the next few months. I am not sure why everyone just automatically thinks it will be dry again. So in summary, we are several weeks away from going into a severe drought or one or two storms away from being super wet. One thing I learned, things change in a hurry down here. By the way, for many of you who appear to be climatologically impaired -areas east and northeast of Houston -on average ALWAYS get a lot more rainfall than Houston. On average, Houston ALWAYS gets more rain than Katy annually.

The cumulative precipitation graph in the March 21 post is the representation that caught my eye. It’s striking the degree to which the trends don’t vary that much from period to period – they approximate linearity. I don’t know if this is an artifact of the way the data are presented temporally and/or spatially, or if it all means something more.